Play Puyo Puyo Gaiden : Puyo Wars Online

Puyo Puyo Gaiden: Puyo Wars came out for the Game Boy Color in 1999, developed by Compile. It was a time when handheld games were really branching out, and this one took the familiar Puyo Puyo puzzle action and mixed it with a turn based strategy layer. You don't just clear chains here; you're managing a little army on an overworld map.

You control a team of characters, moving them square by square across grid based battlefields. The main goal is to defeat all the enemy units on each screen. When your unit meets an enemy, the game switches to a Puyo Puyo battle; winning that duel destroys the opposing unit on the map. You have to think about positioning, because stronger characters can attack from a distance with bows while others are limited to sword fights up close. The pacing is deliberate, making you plan each move carefully, and the difficulty can spike on later maps. It feels like a clever fusion of two different kinds of thinking, where a wrong move on the strategy map can land you in a desperate puzzle match.